tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 04 11:21:20 1999

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Re: Aspect



In a message dated 3/4/1999 8:51:12 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:

<< > be' SuchtaHvIS loD, loD leghpu' puq = The boy saw the man while the man
was
 > visiting the woman.
 
 No. While the visit happened, the seeing had been completed. 
 Three possibilities:
 
 While the man visited the woman, the boy had seen the man. 
 [English doesn't as clearly indicate that the seeing happened 
 and was not continuing BEFORE the visiting. Again, this is 
 something Klingon says more precisely than English.]
  >>
====================

You have capitalized "before" to point out to me that the Klingon perfective
{-pu'} action must have been completed before the action of the dependent
clause can have begun.  Is this not correct?

Why cannot the perfection of the action take place "during" the visiting?  If
it cannot, then Klingon is different from ANY Earth language I have been able
to discover which uses aspect alone or a combination of aspect, aktionsart,
and/or tense.

Finally, how do you render the Klingon sentence meaning "The boy saw the man
(and that completion of seeing the man occurred during) while the man was
visiting the woman"?

peHruS



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